Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 04_ Backlash - Aaron Allston [63]
Allana kicked Monarg in the shins again. “Bully!”
Redness suffusing his face, Monarg turned back to her and glared with his one good eye. “You’re going to pay for that, little girl.” He had to speak loudly. Allana realized that it was because she was still screaming.
She stopped screaming, grabbed Monarg’s cup from the desk, and dashed its contents into his too-close face.
He roared like a wounded Wookiee and staggered away from her.
She threw the caf mug at him. It bounced off his left shin, directly above where she’d kicked him, then dropped to the permacrete floor and shattered.
Monarg straightened and glared back in her direction, but his eye could barely open, and the way he turned his head, like a short-range sensor dish trying to pick up an incoming target, told Allana that he could not see her. She almost cheered.
Then the hangar door bang closed again. Allana glanced over to see if C-3PO had finally arrived, but the droid was nowhere to be seen. In fact, she didn’t see anyone near the door, just two shapes that she might have been imagining disappearing into two dark corners. One looked big and male, and the other small and female, and then they were gone.
Allana didn’t know who they were—or even if she had really seen them—but she did know that if they weren’t C-3PO, they probably weren’t on her side. She looked around for something else to throw at Monarg—something big enough to knock him out so she could rescue R2-D2 and Anji and get out.
Monarg flipped the patch up from his other eye. The orb he revealed was durasteel gray with a glowing yellow optical at the center. That was inhuman enough, but then it extended out four centimeters from his eye socket, telescoping and pointing straight at her. Monarg lunged at her.
Allana screamed again and darted aside. He froze where he was and turned, his head swiveling, the telescoping eye swinging independently.
And yet he did not see her, not in those first few moments.
She understood. The prosthetic he had for an eye was a micro-optic, designed to make very tiny things, such as delicate circuitry, easy to see and evaluate. With his normal eye out of commission, he had to look for her as if peering down a narrow reed. She ended her latest scream with a gulp and backed away.
He spotted her again and came after her, but his leg slipped out from under him—almost like somebody had pulled it—and he fell down.
Allana ran, hitting and ricocheting off one of the mechanic droids, and rounded the stern end of the yacht. It smelled like fresh paint. She wondered if she could find a container of paint to dash into his prosthetic eye. She peered back the way she’d come.
He had lost her again. His head and eye turned this way and that. As a mechanic droid passed near him, he reached out, seized it, assured himself by touch that it was not a little girl, and let it go.
Monarg made a strangled noise loud enough for her to hear, then raised his voice. “Headache mode!”
Every mechanic droid in the shop slowed its pace. The rumble of wheels across permacrete and servos moving arms immediately muted. A near silence fell across the shop, broken only by faint whirs, quiet metallic clatters, and Anji’s soft whimpers.
Allana gulped again. If she had to creep to avoid being heard, it would take her so long to get back to Anji and R2-D2 that Monarg was sure to hear her again … or maybe the pain of the caf would wear off and he could use his real eye again.
But maybe … She looked at all the droids gliding around her. Even at reduced speed, they made pretty good time.
She crouched down into a ball and rolled onto the carry-tray of a droid passing her. It was a simple move, acrobatics much easier than some Leia had taught her, and she felt very proud of herself as she rolled up to a sitting position, having made almost no noise at all.
The droid carrying her rolled back the way she’d come, straight toward Monarg. Allana made